Jon And Kate Plus 8 — Multiple Blessings

Surviving to Thriving With Twins and Sextuplets
Written by Maddie Michael (a fan) 

My Favorite Things to Do (And Important Events)

Spend time with my family
Raise my eight children
Chat with my husband
Attend my job as a nurse
Travel
Planning and Organizing
Relaxing

Important Events

July 18, 2004

The babies come home — six babies, three girls and three boys come home to Pennsylvania. We named them Alexis, Aaden, Hannah, Collin, Leah and Joel. 

“On the day of July 18, I looked around the condo…” (See page 111)

 

May 10, 2004 — the sextuplets are born. Let the naming begin. They had to stay in the hospital because they were premature (premies). All the challenges we were faced with were worth it when we saw them born and healthy. (Though a bit small).

“On the morning of May 10, 2004, the first of the sextuplets were born.” (See page 76)

 

November 2004 — I am pregnant with six babies! What am I going to do?  I never expected this to happen to me. But I will love them all, anyway. Of course! 

“On the Friday before Thanksgiving of 2003… I knew that potentially six lives would be riling on me.” 

October 8, 2000 — Cara and Madelyn are born! Twin girls! My dream come true. Now Jon and I can both take care of a baby at the same time! We’ve always wanted twins.

“Finally on Oct. 8, 2000… the arival of our two bright-eyed beauties!” (See page 18) 

St. Patrick’s Day 2000   — Jon and I found out we were having twins! We are so excited! 

“We had been scheduled for an ultrasound appointment on St. Patrick’s Day of 2000… We were expecting twins!” (See page 17)

June 12, 1999 — Jon and I get married! It was a beautiful sunny day, just like the bright future ahead of us. 

“Our wedding day: June 12, 1999″ (Page 13)

Keep Your Writing Simple (Even for the Suits)

This information was sent to me by a fellow blogger from Scott Adams blog. Does his name sound familiar? He is the creater of “Dilbert.”

Scott lives in Danville California, my former home town. It’s a beautiful suburb of San Francisco and home to Bishop Ranch, the corporate headquarters of several Fortune 500 companies. It’s where Scott gets his ideas on life inside the cubicles.

The Day You Became A Better Writer

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

BMC Software Continues to Make the Cuts to Stay Lean and Mean

Houston-based BMC Software has laid off 21 U.S. employees this week, according to the Houston Chronicle. It’s not clear how many cuts were made at the Houston office or the type of jobs affected. BMC makes software to improve how businesses manage their technology resources. The company has had superior stock value growth over the past year. One business model is to buy up small IT companies and then cut the massive organization’s redundancies.

Now one of the biggest mobile companies blogs

Verizon has decided that blogging is a good way to communicate with customers and potential users about all kinds of issues. That may not be news, but what is interesting is that while a great many companies and organizations still consider blogging to be a sort of “fringe fad.” Verizon is admitting that they are entering this game from behind. Here’s what they said:

It’s one of the biggest things we’ll be launching this year,” said DeVard, who acknowledged that Verizon is playing catch-up in the fields of online and social networking. “We were asleep at the wheel a bit,” she said. Verizon will spend 15 percent of its marketing budget online this year, and she said that may not be enough.

HP, IBM and BMC Software have blogs. They are all pretty serious organizations.

There is about to be a land rush for prime dotmobi names — better stake your claims

It’s like the Oklahoma land rush.

New “dotmobi” internet domain names will go on general sale on Tuesday in an attempt to drive the use of mobile devices as platforms to surf the web.

More than 13,000 names have been registered in an initial period reserved for trademark holders as part of an initiative parts of the telecommunications industry believe will encourage web use on mobile phones and devices such as the BlackBerry, reported by the Financial Times of London.

But critics across a broad swath of business, the law and academe are railing against the proliferation of new domains, which they claim are costly and a cause of fraud.

A consortium that includes Microsoft, Nokia and Vodafone is promoting “dotmobi” but others in the technology industry have voiced concerns. A senior lawyer at Verizon Communications, the second-largest US telecommunications group, said there was no “particular business need” for “dotmobi” and the company had only registered verizon.mobi to prevent others taking it.

“What we would not want to happen is for this name to be an infringer’s paradise,” said Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel for Verizon.

She added: “Most of the new domain names have been failures and the vast majority of valuable real estate still rests in ‘dotcom’.”

It doesn’t take a marketing genius to see the potential for dotmobi. Today at lunch do your own head count of mobil users.

IT’s New Bold Mission — Enterprise

In the high-tech space, the growth curve is steep. Sure, you can point to the business press articles about desktop assembly and helpdesks moving off shore, that’s helping companies keep wage inflation in the U.S. low. But the growth is in another area of IT right here in the U.S. It’s called business service management (BSM), the model that melds together all the functions of business to IT seamlessly. Analysts are saying we are on the cusp of advancement in this arena. And BSM has a long way to go, decades, before it levels out in its life cycle. At global companies and medium-sized regional businesses, IT is energizing the enterprise.

The leaders in this space are the ‘new and improved’ IBM and the giant HP. Others joining the inner circle are Microsoft, BMC Software and CA, followed by hundreds of medium-sized service-oriented companies that often partner with HP and IBM in customizing their solutions. IT departments are transforming from fire stations to a vital business function such as finance and marketing.

Web 2.0 is spreading to the board room. Blogs and podcasts are now being used by IT companies to communicate and exchange real world ideas. It’s no longer just for the rantings against Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as discussed on the likes of The GillmorGang and other geek blogs.

TalkBMC is one of the first out of the gate. You can chat with software heavy hitters such as Tom Bishop, the CTO of BMC Software. They share their thoughts on ITIL implementations, CMDB optimization, and the big picture. This info can help you greatly in your career. You will understand the key areas that IT can contribute to an organization’s management. Don’t wait to be outsourced. Check it out.

http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-bishop/cto/

Bombings, floods, plagues – nothing slows India’s outsourcing boom

—— By Gregory Michael
India’s economy is surfing a decade-long economic wave created by its booming IT outsourcing industry. There have been a lot of upbeat reports on India’s economic rise, including major features in Business Week, Time magazine, and  the Wall Street Journal. Could recent disasters cause the wave to crash?
India has not gone unscathed in regard to political violence or natural disasters. One of the biggest jolts came with the bombings in one of India’s largest business centers, Mumbai (formerly Bombay). On July 11, nearly 200 commuters were killed and scores more injured by terrorist bombings.  Last year, Mumbai saw 38.5 inches of rainfall in a single day – more rain than Texas or California get in an entire year. It was a record for Mumbai, as well. In the wake of the floods and attacks, outsourcing companies in Mumbai and the major outsourcing hubs rushed to make sure that first, their employees were safe, second, that important customer data was secure and business functions continued to run seamlessly.  In the weeks that followed, outsourcing clients in the U.S. and U.K. offered support and formed more detailed disaster recovery plans with their Indian vendors for future disruptions that are inevitable as they are everywhere.

I see geek people. Some of them don’t even know they are geeks.

 

 

By Greg Michael

I parachuted into a huge, $1.5 billion  IT enterpirse software corporation. I escaped from the rapidly disintegrating world of old media. Now inside, it’s a gleaming campus with restaurants, banks, healthclubs,  herb gardens, bikes and scooters, I work  with  people with high IQs, real geniuses, many are millionaires from their start-ups being bought up. Some make the PC guy on the new Mac commercials look cool.  I am the Geek Whisperer.  

I can actually talk with them and understand what they mean by ITIL, CMDB, BSM, SOS, SOX, bots, vlogs, blades, dashboards, ’self-healing’ and ‘lights out.’ Yes, it is a different world. Let me help you understand. Send me the ‘root causes’ that confuse you, and I will help translate, I really can communicate with them. We will all benefit in the long run with this cultural exchange. We might even convince some of them not to wear socks with sandals.

UPDATE: My contract is nearly up at the software giant. I’m grateful for the IT ‘boot camp’ experience. Our biggest product launch is over. The stock price has risen 30 percent and projects have slowed down to a normal pace.